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Finding Lost Music

If you seem to be missing some songs, it’s possible that they didn’t download properly when you purchased them. In this case, try selecting Check for Purchases, from the Advanced menu. This will allow you to download any songs that didn’t completely download when you bought them.

If you see an exclamation point icon appear next to your songs, this means your songs were accidentally moved or deleted. Finding lost songs can be a little tricky, so if you’re new using computers, you may want to get some help. If you want to try finding songs that were just moved, you can try to re-link them up. If your iTunes Library file was deleted or corrupted, try dragging your files back into iTunes to rebuild your library.

The best way to ensure you don’t lose your music and videos is to perform regular backups. To recover songs and videos from a data CD or DVD, just insert the CD or DVD, and drag the songs and videos back to your iTunes Library.



Tips

Rebuild your iTunes library

When your iTunes Library file has been deleted or corrupted, rebuild your library by just dragging your song files into iTunes.

Steps

Locate lost songs

  1. Start by checking to see if your purchased songs have downloaded properly. Go to the Advanced menu and select Check for Purchases.
  2. If your songs were accidentally moved or deleted, you’ll see an exclamation point next to the song name. Double-click the song, and then click Locate to try to find the song or video on your hard drive.
  3. Finding songs on a PC: Click Search from the Start menu. Click All Files and folders. In the "All or part of the file name" field, type ".m4p or .mp4" and then click Search. If you see the songs or videos you are looking for in the Search Results window, you can add them back into your iTunes library.
  4. Finding songs on a Mac: In Finder, choose Find from the File menu (if using Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, you can click the Spotlight menu instead). Type "m4p" as the search term to find music. Click Search (Spotlight automatically searches as you type, and does not have a Search button). If you see the songs you are looking for in the Search Results window, you can add them back into your iTunes library. To search for videos, use "mp4" as the search term. If you see the videos you are looking for in the Search Results window, you can add them back into your iTunes library.
  5. If none of the above work, try dragging your iTunes folder back into iTunes. This will rebuild your library, in case your iTunes library file was accidentally deleted or corrupted.
  6. If you’ve performed regular backups of your music and videos, just insert your backup CD or DVD into your computer, and drag the songs and videos you want to recover to your iTunes Library.